Hacker Cinema
I Dream of Jeannie
1965 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Sidney Sheldon
Science FictionFantasyComedyFamily
While on a mission, American astronaut Captain Tony Nelson is forced to make an emergency landing that will forever change his life. On a deserted South Pacific island, Captain Nelson happens upon a bottle containing a beautiful two-thousand-year-old female genie named Jeannie. Rescuing her from the bottle nets Tony the requisite three wishes, and then some, when Jeannie pledges total devotion to her new "master".
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4 comments on Hacker News
All older films do not sit dormant for decades, and then are suddenly rediscovered. That's not remotely so. Some are a cult classic when produced, thus no one is ever "taking a chance on it", because it's always been a profitable endevour to pump out on late night TV, or on a VHS, DVD, Bluray, or digital version.
It feels like so much history and reality is missing in this idea of an 'ancient film'.
There were so many films like this, yet under copyright, available on late night TV back in the day. Before most had cable, before most even had VHS machines, you'd turn on TV at night on a Saturday, or at 2am on a Tuesday, and see endless old movies.
Once VHS came out, you could get virtually anything older because the film -> VHS transfer process was cheap, and people wanted content. You'd pay a buck to rent old junk at the store, and the campier the better.
Put another way, it became a cult classic when it was released, and then was always available. Endless copyrighted works were in the same category.
There is no 'chance' taken, for it was always seen as chance-worthy.
But beyond this:
* This film is the first part of a trilogy, Night, Dawn, Day of the Living Dead. Anyone watching any of these films, wanted to see the whole set
* Even if under copyright, as others have stressed, this one is on the list. What list? A list you do clearly not share, which is fine, but horror fan films do.
EDIT:
I'm going to give a little more context here.
In this timescope, there was a show called "I Dream of Jeannie"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dream_of_Jeannie
In this show, Barbra Eden wears a 60's envisioned harem costume. There is one important aspect of this costume, and that is that her belly button is covered.
Why?
Because it was illegal.
There is a whole deep dive here, but the point is that Night of the Living Dead was an extremely gory and violent film in its day, immensely groundbreaking, and people desperately wanted to see it.
It didn't become a cult classic because it was easier to distribute. It became one because of what it was.
That's the point I think.
NOTE: This does not invalidate the concept that some films can follow your path, it's just that this one didn't.
So cool. An episode of I Dream of Jeannie is on WTTG at 11 AM.
Tom's Album has a lot of interesting tracks on it, including one refocused around the television series I Dream of Jeannie, called "Jeannie's Diner," by the man who would eventually be Richard Cheese, parodyist extraordinaire.
"What was it about the 1970s and early 1980s that made Computer Science more welcoming to women? And what changed? I want the answer to this question too!"
A hypothesis (remember this is only a hypothesis):
What changed was that science and math became way less cooler in the (American) public perception between the 80s and the 2000s.
With the cold war and space race, scientists and engineers were supposed to be the people who took the US to the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were, after all, engineers. The last flight to the moon was in 1972. The Voyagers were launced in 1977. Scientists, astronauts, and their like were cool, for a change. No one cared about who was winning college football when people were going to the moon and exploring the Solar System. My theory is that CS / Engineering got caught along in this wave and experienced strong female enrollment
Later, in the late 90s, and early 2000s, films like American Pie and whatnot came along, and solidified the appeal of the sports-playing jock, and making fun of the "nerds". Suddenly, nerds were the weak, spotty kids who were buried in their math books, and girls did not want to be associated with them. Enter present day, with probably 10% of CS classes in good schools being composed of women (unless it's MIT etc., which preferentially admits women to even the ratios, if I remember correctly)
To see the attitude change, just think of television programs. The scientist/astronaut Major Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70) was portrayed as a strong, positive, and socially successful character. The scientists in Big Bang Theory are portrayed as a bunch of socially inept shut-ins who are very socially/romantically unsuccessful and are supposed to be pitied by the audience.